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Speaker 1: But Macmore and Sodosmo were necromancers who came from the

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Speaker 1: dark Isle of nat to practice their baleful arts in

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Speaker 1: Tinniath beyond the shrunken seas. But they did not prosper

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Speaker 1: in tinniaf for death was deemed a holy thing by

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Speaker 1: the people of that gray country, and the nothingness of

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Speaker 1: the tomb was not lightly to be desecrated, and the

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Speaker 1: raising up of the dead by necromancy was held in abomination.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is.

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Speaker 3: Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back

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Speaker 3: with part three in our series on necromancy, the ancient

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Speaker 3: practice of consulting the dead or the spirits of the

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Speaker 3: dead for the purpose of divination of accessing hidden knowledge.

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Speaker 1: Yes, despite the fact that a lot of our modern

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Speaker 1: pop cultury uses of necromancy tend to involve raising of

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Speaker 1: the dead. And actually that quote that I read at

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Speaker 1: the top of this episode is from the nineteen thirty

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Speaker 1: two short story The Empire of the Necromancers by Clark

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Speaker 1: Ashton Smith, and it is full of raising the dead

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Speaker 1: via the necromantic arts. But as we've discussed in these

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Speaker 1: episodes so far, necromancy, as we loosely categorize it, is

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Speaker 1: more situated in the realm of divination.

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Speaker 3: Now. In the previous episodes in the series, which if

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Speaker 3: you haven't listened to yet, you should probably go check

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Speaker 3: those out first. But in these previous episodes, we talked

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Speaker 3: about accounts of necromancy or pseudo necromantic legends from ancient China.

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Speaker 3: We talked about accounts of how necromancy was practiced or

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Speaker 3: may have been practiced in ancient Mesopotamia, including consulting these

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Speaker 3: tablets that have descriptions of the incantations use and the

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Speaker 3: potions to prepare if you want to speak to the

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Speaker 3: dead through a prepared skull in a special ritual. In

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Speaker 3: part two, we talked about a lot of accounts of

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Speaker 3: necromancy as practiced or at least as used as a

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Speaker 3: plot device in stories from ancient Greece and Rome, and

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Speaker 3: today we wanted to come back and finish out the

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Speaker 3: discussion by talking about necromancy a little bit more.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, We're going to jump around a little bit here.

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Speaker 1: Later on in the episode, I think we're going to

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Speaker 1: get into some medieval Christian ideas about necromancy, what it was,

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Speaker 1: and whether you should do it or not. A spoiler,

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Speaker 1: they tended to say no, don't do it. But with

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Speaker 1: some caveats I'll get into.

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Speaker 3: I also want to interrogate the boundaries of necromancy a

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Speaker 3: little bit and maybe pick apart the concept somewhat. But

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Speaker 3: before we do that, there's a question that's been coming

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Speaker 3: up because we've been looking at examples from the ancient

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Speaker 3: world of how this may have been practiced, or at

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Speaker 3: least was thought by some to be practiced in the

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Speaker 3: ancient world. My question would be, well, how far back

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Speaker 3: does it go? What's the earliest evidence we have of

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Speaker 3: people trying to communicate or consult with the dead.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's get into that a little bit again,

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Speaker 1: with the huge caveat that the term necromancy can be

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Speaker 1: applied very broadly or very specifically, and is ultimately just

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Speaker 1: a word. So with that in mind, I will refer

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Speaker 1: back briefly to the paper The Origins of necromancyho or

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Speaker 1: How We Learn to Speak to the Dead by Czech

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Speaker 1: academic Andreis Kavkar. He argues for a connection potentially between

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Speaker 1: ancient shamanistic practices and what we might think of as necromancy,

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Speaker 1: with individual human beings often serving as psychopomps for example,

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Speaker 1: you know, guardians, guie, there to guide one spirit from

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Speaker 1: this world into the next. Other functions that would put

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Speaker 1: a living mortal shaman in some form of communication with

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Speaker 1: the deceased or also imaginable. This in addition to just

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Speaker 1: general ancestor veneration, ancestor cults, and ancestor worshiped. So it's

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Speaker 1: not it's not inconceivable to consider all of this potential

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Speaker 1: hallmark of human spiritual and religious thought going back to

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Speaker 1: very early human culture, as a coping method for the

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Speaker 1: emotionally and socially devastating reality of death.

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Speaker 3: Right, we don't know, but it seems perfectly plausible that

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Speaker 3: it could be something like first, people you know, just

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Speaker 3: merely emotionally missed their dead loved ones and wanted to

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Speaker 3: you know, continue thinking about them and talking about them

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Speaker 3: and so forth, and maybe from this arose some kind

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Speaker 3: of culture of keeping their memory alive, out of which

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Speaker 3: arose some kind of idea that well, maybe there are

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Speaker 3: ways to still talk to them somehow, and maybe they

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Speaker 3: have something to say to us.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, we undeniably have a desire to

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Speaker 1: speak to them. I mean, that's proven out in so

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Speaker 1: many countless examples, including our own individual experiences. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have visited the grave

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Speaker 1: of a deceased loved one and spoken to them, you know,

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Speaker 1: varying degrees of understanding or expectation of them hearing us,

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Speaker 1: and certainly of them speaking back to us. But to

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Speaker 1: speak to the dead, I think is not necessarily this

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Speaker 1: you know, this alien, supernatural thing. I think it comes

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Speaker 1: from a very natural place in the human psyche, and

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Speaker 1: I mean probably gets back into this idea that, yeah,

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Speaker 1: when someone dies, it is emotionally and socially devastating and

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Speaker 1: we have to find ways to deal with it.

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Speaker 3: On the other hand, while you can imagine that historical

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Speaker 3: or prehistoric development, and it certainly seems plausible, it's hard

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Speaker 3: to have decisive evidence for things like that, or to

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Speaker 3: have decisive evidence of practices of communicating with and getting

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Speaker 3: knowledge from the dead from before times of say literary

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Speaker 3: writings about such right.

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Speaker 1: Right, because the literature gives us more insight into what

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Speaker 1: was done, why it was done, and what the expectation was.

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Speaker 1: In many instances, sometimes you know, there are still questions, certainly,

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Speaker 1: but otherwise what are you left with. You're left with

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Speaker 1: human remains, and you can sort of look at like

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Speaker 1: two broad categories situations where human remains have not been

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Speaker 1: manipulated by human beings and situations where they have been

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Speaker 1: manipulated by human beings and added caveat. As we've discussed

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Speaker 1: in the show before, and we've recently had a guest

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Speaker 1: in the show to discuss this, like sometimes that's up

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Speaker 1: for dispute too, with one side saying I don't think

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Speaker 1: these bodies were manipulated by human beings. I think they

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Speaker 1: were manipulated by predatory animals, and then the other side saying, no,

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Speaker 1: this is evidence of humans manipulating their dead, and intentional

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Speaker 1: manipulation of the dead has been going on for a

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Speaker 1: very long time, at least since the time of the Neanderthals.

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Speaker 1: We move bodies, and we've moved bodies for various purposes,

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Speaker 1: and a rich global heritage of funerary practices have grown

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Speaker 1: out of these two nitions. But with the oldest burials,

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Speaker 1: you look at them and yeah, we just have very

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Speaker 1: little to go on when we're trying to decide try

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Speaker 1: and figure out like what was the intent behind this practice?

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Speaker 1: Was it a practice, and what was the intent?

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Speaker 3: Right? So, given those extreme caveats, what are some of

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Speaker 3: these pieces of ambiguous evidence people might point to to think,

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Speaker 3: I wonder if this was used for romantic purposes, for necromancy.

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Speaker 1: Well, Kapcar highlights ancient archaeological sites linked to ancestor Coults

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Speaker 1: as being some of the main candidates for some form

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Speaker 1: of ancient necromancy in the Middle East. And I should

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Speaker 1: add that he's not arguing, like one hundred percent this

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Speaker 1: is necromancy. He's just saying, like, Okay, beyond what we

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Speaker 1: can be certain about, what evidence could we make an

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Speaker 1: argument about. A specific mention is made of the plaster

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Speaker 1: covered heads of cuttle Hook dating back to seventy five

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Speaker 1: hundred to fifty seven hundred BCE. We've mentioned this place

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Speaker 1: on the show before, specifically in our Invention episodes on

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Speaker 1: the coffin, the Toilet, and the Mirror, as well as

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Speaker 1: our stuff to Blow your Mind episodes on brain and

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Speaker 1: head theft. Because there does seem to be some sort

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Speaker 1: of ritual removal of the head here.

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Speaker 3: Well, let's zero in on the example of plastered human

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Speaker 3: skulls from the ancient fertile Crescent to see what we

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Speaker 3: can figure out from them. A rob I've attached a

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Speaker 3: picture for you to look at here. This is a

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Speaker 3: famous plastered skull from I think dates given are sometimes

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Speaker 3: nine thousand or nine thousand, five hundred years ago. This

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Speaker 3: is sometimes known as the Jericho skull. It is one

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Speaker 3: of the skulls recovered from the tell or the mound

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Speaker 3: of the ancient settlement of Jericho. And this is from

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Speaker 3: the Neolithic period.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is quite intriguing to look at because again

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Speaker 1: you have a human skull, but it has been covered

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Speaker 1: in plaster in a way to sort of it seems like,

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Speaker 1: to recreate the flesh of the dead. And then we

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Speaker 1: have what I believe these are shells that have been

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Speaker 1: placed in where the eyes would be.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So there are multiple artifacts of this type

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Speaker 3: from the ancient Levant and some from Turkey, from again

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Speaker 3: the site of Chattelhuyuk. And essentially what these are real

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Speaker 3: human skulls, sometimes without the mandible, so without the lower jaw,

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Speaker 3: filled in with earth or plaster, and then covered on

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Speaker 3: the outside in plaster at least on the front, and

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Speaker 3: decorated with individual facial features. So as you said, Rob,

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Speaker 3: seashells for eyes, they might be clam shells or cowie shells,

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Speaker 3: some kind of shells, marine shells to simulate eyeballs, and

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Speaker 3: then plaster facial structure, so maybe even like eyelids, overlapping

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Speaker 3: the seashells in a way, and of course painting on

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Speaker 3: the outside, so hair and eyebrows and mustaches and so

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Speaker 3: forth would be painted on the plaster. I was actually

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Speaker 3: watching an interview with a curator at the British Museum.

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Speaker 3: Coincident only another in the series Curator's Corner, which I

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Speaker 3: mentioned in Part one of this series for unrelated reasons.

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Speaker 3: That was just an interview with an author named Irving Finkel,

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Speaker 3: who we were reading a paper from that was about

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Speaker 3: ancient Mesopotamian exorcism practices. This is an interview with a

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Speaker 3: curator from the British Museum named Alexandra Fletcher about the

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Speaker 3: Jericho skull, and she opines that the Jericho skull, the

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Speaker 3: one you're looking at here, Rob is probably the oldest

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Speaker 3: example of portraiture in the British Museum's collection because of

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Speaker 3: the assumption that it was made to resemble a specific person,

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Speaker 3: though we don't know that we don't know for sure,

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Speaker 3: but these skulls are usually assumed to have been made

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Speaker 3: to resemble the person the skull belonged to in life.

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Speaker 1: Which makes sense, right. I mean, if you're gonna do

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Speaker 1: a plasters sculpture of someone and you have their skull

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Speaker 1: on hand, like there you go, that's the perfect foundation

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Speaker 1: upon which to create your art.

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Speaker 3: And there's an interesting scientific and technological parallel to this

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Speaker 3: that comes up in a second. So Fletcher goes into

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Speaker 3: describing some work analysis work that has been done on

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Speaker 3: the Jericho skull. She says, as background, he was part

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Speaker 3: of a group of seven people who were buried together

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Speaker 3: uncovered in the nineteen fifties, and she talks about research

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Speaker 3: to try to analyze the human skull underneath without damaging

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Speaker 3: the plaster surrounding it, at least surrounding the front of

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Speaker 3: the skull. The back is more exposed, and she says

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Speaker 3: that the researchers used CT scanning to create an image

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Speaker 3: of the bone underneath without hurting the plaster, and that

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Speaker 3: revealed some interesting stuff. For example, this man's nose was

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Speaker 3: broken sometime in life, and it shows how it had

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Speaker 3: been broken and healed, and as a child, this man

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Speaker 3: had had his head bound to possibly to shape the

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Speaker 3: skull as the man grew up, so there was a

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Speaker 3: sense in which the skull was sort of pinched, and

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Speaker 3: you can see a ridge in the the skull where

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Speaker 3: it was pinched that way. And this as he developed,

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Speaker 3: he had slightly elongated skull for this reason.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, not an uncommon practice in certain parts

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Speaker 1: of the ancient world.

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Speaker 3: After death, the inside of the skull was stuffed with

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Speaker 3: soil and clay, and there's a hole in the back

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Speaker 3: of the skull where Fletcher says, you can still see

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Speaker 3: the indentations of the fingers of the person who packed

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Speaker 3: the clay into the brain cavity.

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Speaker 1: Wow.

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Speaker 3: But the interesting parallel to the ancient plaster surrounding the

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Speaker 3: skull is that by analyzing the bone structure, modern scientists

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Speaker 3: were able to with a good degree of accuracy, they think,

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Speaker 3: reconstruct this man's face. The process is considered not exact,

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Speaker 3: but pretty accurate, to the extent that Fletcher claims that

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Speaker 3: if people who knew this man in life walked into

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Speaker 3: the room and saw the reconstruction, she says she thinks

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Speaker 3: they would instantly recognize him. So in a way, we

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Speaker 3: have used modern technology to reconstructed this man's face around

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Speaker 3: around the basis of the skull, much like ancient people

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Speaker 3: used I guess probably memory of what this man looked

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Speaker 3: like to reconstruct his face in plaster around the skull.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating though again we we we can't

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Speaker 1: know one hundred percent you know why they did this,

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Speaker 1: and certainly you can you can make arguments for the

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Speaker 1: lifelike qualities being bestowed upon the skull in order to

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Speaker 1: communicate with it. I mean, that's that's certainly the hard

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Speaker 1: nechromatic angle to take on it, and and others have

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Speaker 1: found this interesting as well. These skulls are brought up

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Speaker 1: by Julian James in his book The Origin of Consciousness

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Speaker 1: and the Breakdown of the Biicameral Mind as being you know,

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Speaker 1: one of the many different bits of evidence or alleged

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Speaker 1: evidence from the ancient world that he uses to back

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Speaker 1: up this this hypothesis of the bicameral mind.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he probably is leaning heavily on the interpretation that

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Speaker 3: people talked to these skulls, which again I want to

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Speaker 3: really emphasize, like we don't know that all we have

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Speaker 3: are the artifacts. There are not there's not literature describing

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Speaker 3: how these skulls were used in the ancient world, so

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Speaker 3: we just don't know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know if they spoke to the skulls.

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Speaker 1: For the most I mean, we don't know if the

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Speaker 1: skull We assume the skulls did not answer, though Jane's

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Speaker 1: would argue that they possibly did. And yes, if Julian

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Speaker 1: Jane's hypothesis was correct, that would impact everything we've been

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Speaker 1: discussing about in terms of necromancy, because it would mean that, yes,

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Speaker 1: there here is a neurological way that the dead not

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Speaker 1: only could speak to human beings but spoke to them

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Speaker 1: on a regular basis. Go back and listen to our

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Speaker 1: old episodes on his hypothesis if you want to know

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Speaker 1: more about that. But yeah, at the end of the day,

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Speaker 1: did they just simply recreate these faces in order to

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Speaker 1: honor them, to remember them, and if they were speaking

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Speaker 1: to them, like we can sort of imagine like a

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Speaker 1: broad scale a spectrum of possible necromancy, you know, and

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Speaker 1: there's you know, there are certainly versions of this interpretation

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Speaker 1: in which they might have been speaking to these skulls,

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Speaker 1: but we're not actually seeking knowledge from the dead that's right.

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Speaker 3: So I want to get deeper into that in a minute.

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Speaker 3: But in a way, this connects to what I thought

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Speaker 3: was an interesting little side comment that this British Museum

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Speaker 3: researcher Alexander Fletcher makes in this interview where she just

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Speaker 3: kind of says that, you know, the longer you work

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Speaker 3: with work with these skulls, do research on them, especially

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Speaker 3: maybe from the you know, the reconstruction of the face,

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Speaker 3: the more you come to see the skulls not just

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Speaker 3: as an artifact but as a person. And I was like, wow,

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Speaker 3: maybe I am over interpreting, but that seems perhaps revealing

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Speaker 3: about the effect they might have had on the people

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Speaker 3: who originally made them as well. Yeah, I want to

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Speaker 3: come back to the idea of adding some sort of

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Speaker 3: complications to the idea of necromancy or divination through the

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Speaker 3: dead as a coherent and discreet practice. So I was

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Speaker 3: thinking about this, and I was thinking about how in

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Speaker 3: a lot of these early settlements where these plaster skulls

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Speaker 3: are found, you know, the settlements with permanent structures like

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Speaker 3: Chattlehoo Yuck, which you mentioned in Jericho, there are other

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Speaker 3: interesting features about how the dead were dealt with as well.

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Speaker 3: Not just the creation of plaster skulls, but in these settlements,

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Speaker 3: it seems sometimes the bodies of the dead were buried

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Speaker 3: inside people's houses. So maybe your grandparents' bones might not

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Speaker 3: be often a cemetery somewhere else that you go and

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Speaker 3: visit from time to time, but right in the house

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Speaker 3: with you, maybe buried under the floor or under your bed. Again,

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Speaker 3: we don't know for sure why they did this. All

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Speaker 3: kinds of specs abounds. In some cases, it looks like

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Speaker 3: the bodies might have been removed elsewhere for the flesh

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Speaker 3: to rot off the bones or be picked off the bones.

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Speaker 3: Maybe the bones were defleshed somewhere else and then maybe

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Speaker 3: brought back inside the house and then they would live

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Speaker 3: under the floor, under your bed or something. But these

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Speaker 3: are also places where we encounter plastered skulls. So it

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Speaker 3: just seems it seems possible to me that if the

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Speaker 3: skull had some kind of significance as as a conduit

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Speaker 3: for communication with the dead, I wonder if it wasn't

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Speaker 3: a special, discrete, transactional event ritual like we've been talking

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Speaker 3: about in some of these Greek stories. You know where

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Speaker 3: you go to the oracle and you know what I mean,

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Speaker 3: like it being a special event. I wonder if it's

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Speaker 3: more like just a kind of continuous belief that, yes,

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Speaker 3: Grandma is still here with us, she's in the house,

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Speaker 3: she lives with us.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I can easily imagine that that being

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Speaker 1: the case. Again, it's not too far away from sort

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Speaker 1: of the mild background supernatural ideas that many of us

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Speaker 1: may may dabble in, you know, like to think about

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Speaker 1: a deceased love one being nearby, you know, I think

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Speaker 1: it is something that a lot of us probably due

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Speaker 1: to some degree without even being on the level of

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Speaker 1: like I believe in ghosts, you know.

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Speaker 3: And so if the situation were something more like that,

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Speaker 3: to the extent that you would seek advice from your

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Speaker 3: grandparent in this context, I wonder if it would give

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Speaker 3: kind of the wrong impression to call that necromancy, because again,

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Speaker 3: of the all the stories we have in which the

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Speaker 3: necromancy is usually more a like I was saying, a discrete,

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Speaker 3: transactional kind of event, ritual versus something that is just

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Speaker 3: intimate and continuous in part of life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so many of these stories, ancient and modern. To

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Speaker 1: pick necromancy as kind of an extreme thing, you do

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Speaker 1: you know, when when other attempts to remedy a situation

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Speaker 1: have not worked, that's when you seek out the necromantic solution.

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Speaker 3: But then again, just to emphasize how little we know

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Speaker 3: for sure, there could be totally different explanations as well.

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Speaker 3: I mean, maybe burying the bones in the house and

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Speaker 3: putting a plaster face over your ancestor skull, maybe that

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Speaker 3: was just merely a form of honoring and remembering people,

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Speaker 3: just like you might I don't know, have a photo

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Speaker 3: of a dead relative on the wall today or something

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Speaker 3: buried with them. You know, we miss our ancestor who

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Speaker 3: has passed on, So maybe we keep the bones or

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Speaker 3: plaster the skull in a way under the house or

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Speaker 3: in the house in a way of remembering them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and so certainly these are not neutral skulls. These

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Speaker 1: are skulls that are conceivably connected to loved ones. But still,

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Speaker 1: like even like human understanding and appreciation of skulls is

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Speaker 1: kind of complex because they take on all these symbolic meanings,

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Speaker 1: but then they're also there's also this sort of like

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Speaker 1: coolness to the skull that has the same to exist

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Speaker 1: for a long time. And you know, we get into

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Speaker 1: this with other skull based on traditions and artifacts as well,

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Speaker 1: is discussed in their recent either recently rerun or about

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Speaker 1: to be rerun episode where I interviewed Brian Hoggart about

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Speaker 1: anti witchcraft precautions, some of which involved putting skulls, particularly

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Speaker 1: horse skulls, in the foundation of a building. Like a

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Speaker 1: lot of it's just kind of like, well, horse skulls

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Speaker 1: are really interesting looking. They don't look like horses, but

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Speaker 1: yet they are horses, and horses have this important place

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Speaker 1: in human lives. So yeah, there are number of different

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Speaker 1: ways you can go in and try and figure out

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Speaker 1: like why was this important?

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Speaker 3: Right, So there's just so much like we don't know

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Speaker 3: anybody who has too confident or too certain a theory

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Speaker 3: about what these what these remains meant, and how they

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Speaker 3: were used. I think you should be highly skeptical of that.

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Speaker 3: But I do think one interesting piece of information that

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Speaker 3: we can use is not from the ancient world itself,

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Speaker 3: but just from looking at practices of veneration today by analogy,

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Speaker 3: which is a totally common practice all over the world.

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Speaker 1: That's right, we discussed We've discussed some of these already,

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Speaker 1: at least in passing, particularly the importance of ancestor veneration

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Speaker 1: in Chinese culture.

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Speaker 3: Right, And so I was looking for some documentation of

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Speaker 3: people today with religious practices that could be considered to

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Speaker 3: include strong elements of ancestor veneration and also something that

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Speaker 3: could be considered divination via deceased ancestors. And I think

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Speaker 3: from what I can tell, this combination of beliefs is

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Speaker 3: not especially unique or unusual. Lots of people around the

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Speaker 3: world practice forms of ancestor veneration that might include some

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Speaker 3: way of establishing contact with the dead or getting information

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Speaker 3: or messages from them. But I wanted to find one

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Speaker 3: clear example with documentation of specifics so we're not just

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Speaker 3: dealing with generalities. And I came across an interesting paper

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Speaker 3: looking at the Bapetti people. So this was by maur

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Speaker 3: kang E k Lebaka, who is a scholar at the

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Speaker 3: University of South Africa specializing in African musical arts and ethnomusicology.

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Speaker 3: The paper was called the Art of Establishing and Maintaining

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Speaker 3: Contact with Ancestors, a Study of Bapeti Tradition, published in

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Speaker 3: the journal HTS Theological Studies in the year twenty eighteen.

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Speaker 3: So the Bupeti people mostly live within northern South Africa,

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Speaker 3: and Lebaca, synthesizing the work of some previous ethnographers, describes

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Speaker 3: a common view of ancestors among the Bupeti people. Again,

386
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Speaker 3: same caveat with all of the examples we've talked about,

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Speaker 3: beliefs are not usually universal within a culture. All you

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Speaker 3: can do is describe commonly found beliefs. He says, first

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Speaker 3: of all, in the words of a scholar named Mibiti,

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Speaker 3: there is a widespread belief in many African traditional religions

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Speaker 3: that quote, death does not annihilate life, and the departed

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Speaker 3: continue to exist in the hereafter, So the dead or

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Speaker 3: not gone, they remain spiritually alive in some sense. Also,

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Speaker 3: Lebaca says that the character of ancestors is believed to

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Speaker 3: remain fundamentally unchanged since they were alive. Dead ancestors go

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Speaker 3: on existing. They remain themselves in good and bad ways,

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Speaker 3: so they can protect and advise their descendants. But they

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Speaker 3: are also not like perfect, perfected, ethereal beings. They're like us,

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Speaker 3: and they are like they were in life, so also

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Speaker 3: prone to jealousy and motivations of that sort. He says,

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Speaker 3: the spirits of ancestors have the power to affect the

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Speaker 3: fates of the living, and this can be for good

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Speaker 3: or for ill. Their behavior toward the living depends largely

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Speaker 3: on if they are properly honored and venerated, and Lebaca

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Speaker 3: argues that veneration is different from worship. Veneration is more

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Speaker 3: like the respect that the young are expected to give

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Speaker 3: to their elders, except extended beyond the boundary of death,

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Speaker 3: and does have special rituals involved. He says ancestral spirits

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Speaker 3: guard and enforce morality within the family and prevent feuds

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Speaker 3: and conflicts between living members of the family. This is

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Speaker 3: mentioned later in the article, but it's worth noting that

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Speaker 3: ancestors are believed to be powerful and can cause supernatural

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Speaker 3: outcomes to affect people, but they're not omnipotent. They can't

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Speaker 3: do anything. Lebacca says that sometimes but petty ancestors need

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Speaker 3: to be contacted, need to be communicated with, and he

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Speaker 3: says there are a couple of main ways to establish contact.

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Speaker 3: There are these communal music and dance ceremonies known as

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Speaker 3: the malopo ritual, and that appeases the ancestral spirits, but

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Speaker 3: there is also a way of seeking help of traditional healers,

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Speaker 3: especially with the use of divination bones. Now, I want

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Speaker 3: to note that, as far as I could tell, these

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Speaker 3: are not the bones of ancestors. The paper doesn't address

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Speaker 3: this question directly. It seemed to me, based on a

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Speaker 3: photo included in the paper and the fact that it

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Speaker 3: was not specified otherwise, that these would probably be normal

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Speaker 3: kind of bones that would be used in practices of osteomancy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think in other instances of bones being used

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Speaker 1: as essentially, you know, dies of some sort, that they've

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Speaker 1: always been animal bones. I don't remember off hand an

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Speaker 1: example of them being human bones, but it may exist elsewhere.

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Speaker 3: I only specify that because we were just talking about

432
00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 3: examples of bones being kept like within the houses of

433
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 3: the living, So I think we're not talking about ancestors

434
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:35,120
Speaker 3: bones here.

435
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think you're right. The would assurely specified if

436
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:38,359
Speaker 1: that was the case.

437
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 3: So Lebaca in this paper includes a number of interviews

438
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 3: with traditional healers, one of whom describes that direct communication

439
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 3: between healers and their own ancestors happens through music and

440
00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:55,639
Speaker 3: through dreams, and that the purpose of the use of

441
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:59,639
Speaker 3: music and groups singing in ritual contact with ancestors is

442
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 3: quote to create harmony between the living and the ancestors.

443
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 3: And I thought that was interesting because it reminds me

444
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,200
Speaker 3: of the way that, of course singing can be used

445
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:13,000
Speaker 3: to create a sense of togetherness among the living alone,

446
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:16,199
Speaker 3: you know, just like a a group of people singing together.

447
00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:19,400
Speaker 3: I think almost everybody will know what I'm talking about

448
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 3: when I say the way that creates this weird sense

449
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:24,879
Speaker 3: of emergent harmony and sort of group identity. And so

450
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 3: maybe by inviting the dead to be a part of

451
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 3: that as well, you're sort of bringing them to the

452
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 3: table in a way.

453
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

454
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 3: But this paper used a naturalistic approach of observing malopo

455
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 3: rituals and interviewing traditional healers about the function of ancestor

456
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:46,200
Speaker 3: veneration in ba Petti society. And there's one story recounted

457
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 3: in the paper, told by a healer that that goes

458
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 3: basically as follows. I'll do a shorter summary the healer

459
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:56,680
Speaker 3: before she was a traditional healer, she had been sick

460
00:26:56,760 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 3: and had experienced trouble sleeping, and then she had a

461
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 3: theme of a man who gave her a plastic bag

462
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 3: full of divination bones, and so she went to her

463
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:10,439
Speaker 3: Christian church to find out what to do, and they

464
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 3: gave her some instructions of things she could do, but

465
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 3: she did not follow the instructions and started having encounters

466
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:19,680
Speaker 3: with snakes, like there was a snake in her pillowcase

467
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:22,639
Speaker 3: one night, and then the encounters got worse. She and

468
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 3: her husband encountered a much bigger snake. So she and

469
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 3: her husband went to visit a traditional healer and he

470
00:27:29,960 --> 00:27:34,600
Speaker 3: used divination bones to discover that her grandfather had been

471
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 3: a traditional healer himself, and he wanted her to become

472
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 3: a healer as well, and the illness, the insomnia, and

473
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 3: the snakes were signs to push her onto this path.

474
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,760
Speaker 3: So in her story, she accepted the call became a healer,

475
00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:51,920
Speaker 3: and after her training she came home and was welcomed

476
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,919
Speaker 3: back with a malopo ritual and the snakes and the

477
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:58,120
Speaker 3: pain and the insomnia were gone. There are also other

478
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 3: stories included here of health and frightening. Experience is brought

479
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 3: on by ancestors to sort of pressure the living descendants

480
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 3: to follow their advice and Lebaca this is not a

481
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 3: point Lebacca raises in the paper, but I just happen

482
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 3: to note that in the cases documented in this study,

483
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:20,560
Speaker 3: the communication with dead ancestors sought with the help of

484
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 3: healers does not provide information about like objective future outcomes

485
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 3: such as you know what will happen in the future,

486
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 3: who's going to ascend to the throne, who's going to

487
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:32,960
Speaker 3: win the war, like we talked about in some of

488
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:36,359
Speaker 3: these ancient examples. Rather, it seems to be providing the

489
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:42,080
Speaker 3: ancestor's personal perspective. So in this case of divination, it's

490
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:46,520
Speaker 3: it has less of a prophetic quality than in some

491
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 3: of the like, especially the fictional accounts, and seems more

492
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:52,920
Speaker 3: to me like it's focused on seeking the ancestors advice,

493
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 3: like it allows the person to understand the ways that

494
00:28:56,640 --> 00:29:00,280
Speaker 3: the ancestor is influencing their life for good or for ill,

495
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 3: and kind of the same way a chat with a

496
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 3: living elder might provide both personal advice of things that

497
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 3: they think you should do with your life, but also

498
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 3: explanations of why and how the elder is treating you

499
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 3: the way they.

500
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: Are, yeah, and sort of serving to bring the current

501
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: generation in line with past generations and the will and

502
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 1: the expectations of ancestors. This reminds me of how in

503
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: certain analysis I've read of traditional Chinese ancestor generation that

504
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:37,640
Speaker 1: you could think of it as a kind of structural completeness,

505
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:42,200
Speaker 1: that the family unit is not just a thing that exists,

506
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:47,920
Speaker 1: you know, with borders and a certain headcount in the present,

507
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 1: but it is a thing that exists in the present

508
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 1: and stretching back through the past, and therefore like being

509
00:29:55,800 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: in line with the will of ancestors is about like

510
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 1: keeping the structure sound and making sure that everything is

511
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 1: lined up and has this structural completeness, which I think

512
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:11,320
Speaker 1: can be a slightly alien concept to many of us,

513
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,960
Speaker 1: especially if you tend to sort of view like the

514
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: family is a thing that exists solely in the present.

515
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: Maybe it sinks back a little bit in time, but

516
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,280
Speaker 1: is not deeply rooted in the past.

517
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it seems to me to highlight how culturally

518
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 3: variable the idea of the family is, like what constitutes

519
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:34,240
Speaker 3: the family and as especially as like a functional unit

520
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 3: still having an effect on all members within.

521
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:38,600
Speaker 1: Yeah.

522
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 3: But so, anyway, to look at a few assessments from

523
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 3: this paper, Lebacca says that there's a common belief among

524
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:48,680
Speaker 3: people of the Bipetti society that the main thing ancestors

525
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 3: want is to be remembered and respected by their descendants.

526
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 3: And if the living faithfully remember and venerate their ancestors,

527
00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 3: they're going to be blessed with good health, healthy livestock

528
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:02,520
Speaker 3: and crops, good weather, and so forth. And sometimes for

529
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 3: a healing to take place, a healer will have to

530
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 3: consult the spirits of ancestors directly to find out what

531
00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 3: to do. Another interesting thing he notes is that he

532
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 3: says bepetti often feel that it is inappropriate to approach

533
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 3: their supreme deity or God directly, and instead would use

534
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 3: their ancestral spirits as sort of intermediaries or emissaries between

535
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 3: themselves and God. So I thought this was an interesting

536
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 3: layer of perspective that gives us, I think, a more

537
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 3: nuanced view of what it means to be in contact

538
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 3: and communication with the dead. Because here's one case where

539
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 3: people today certainly do use rituals such as communal music

540
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 3: and dance and consultation with healers using divination bones to

541
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 3: get in contact with the dead. But it does not

542
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 3: seem to me, at least not in the cases documented

543
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 3: in this study, to usually be for the purpose of

544
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:03,200
Speaker 3: like knowing the future in advance, but rather for the

545
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 3: purpose of gaining perspective on the present and the past.

546
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 3: You establish communication with the dead in order to receive

547
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 3: wisdom and to receive advice, and to find out what

548
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 3: your ancestors want you to do or expect you to do,

549
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 3: and to find out how the ancestor's advice and desires

550
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 3: are connected to the trials and other things you are

551
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 3: experiencing in your daily life. And this really got me

552
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 3: thinking because it made me think that actually, even in

553
00:32:35,120 --> 00:32:37,640
Speaker 3: a lot of the cases we've already been looking at

554
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 3: from you know, accounts from the ancient world and so forth,

555
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 3: a lot of the cases of divination through spirits of

556
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 3: the dead that we looked at did not consist of

557
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 3: a person seeking to know the future in the kind

558
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 3: of you know, the fictional sorcerer sense we think about,

559
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 3: where like somebody wants ultimate power and so they want

560
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:58,719
Speaker 3: to know what happens ahead of time to exploit that.

561
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 3: In Instead, it very often seemed to involve a much

562
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 3: more personal, intimate, interactive kind of knowledge, like knowledge useful

563
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 3: for the exorcism of an unwanted ghost, or knowledge useful

564
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 3: to get advice or you know, wisdom from an ancestor

565
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 3: or other knowledge of that kind of personal sort. Does

566
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 3: that make sense?

567
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean in a way, it almost puts

568
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,719
Speaker 1: things more in line with this idea that what we

569
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 1: think of as necromancy is maybe more in line with

570
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: various shamanistic practices going stretching back through various human cultures,

571
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 1: very far back in human existence. But yeah, not the

572
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 1: but a lot of like smaller practices aimed at sort

573
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 1: of realigning your life, things that almost could be thought

574
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 1: of as having a therapeutic property to them. You know,

575
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:53,040
Speaker 1: it's like something feels out of line in my life.

576
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 1: I need to get right with the ancestors. I need

577
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 1: to touch base with the ancestors in one form or another.

578
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 3: But that makes me feel like maybe we should come

579
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 3: back and further explore the other side of the scale

580
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 3: as well. If that's a view of divination seeking communication

581
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:12,560
Speaker 3: with the dead as a kind of intimate, wholesome, integrated

582
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:15,400
Speaker 3: thing within people's lives and culture that helps provide the

583
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:19,439
Speaker 3: perspective of ancestors and wisdom. There are also culturally very

584
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 3: different views that would place it back in the category

585
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:27,760
Speaker 3: of like a special extreme transactional kind of event ritual.

586
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:28,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

587
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in this we're gonna we've been talking about

588
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:36,560
Speaker 1: sort of bottom up necromancy, necromancy or things like necromancy

589
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 1: that are that have emerged as part of traditional practices.

590
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 1: Now let's turn back to medieval Christian Europe and think

591
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: about sort of like the top down view of a

592
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:55,439
Speaker 1: Christian hierarchy looking to stamp out necromatic practices and necromantic texts, because,

593
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned several times already, there is this general

594
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: attitude in medieval Christian Europe, again very top down, not

595
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: talking about like traditional pre Christian beliefs that are still

596
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,720
Speaker 1: resonating among the various peoples of Europe and various peoples

597
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:13,840
Speaker 1: under the control of Christian forces, but rather this top

598
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 1: down view that first of all, the dead cannot be

599
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 1: communicated with, and they should not be communicated with. If

600
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:24,920
Speaker 1: you attempt necromancy, you may well speak with something, but

601
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:27,759
Speaker 1: it will be a demon rather than a ghost, and

602
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 1: so only ill can come of it. Now that being said,

603
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:36,879
Speaker 1: necromancy and necromatic texts certainly existed and were circulated. At times,

604
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: they were greatly feared by the Church, as pointed out

605
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: by Richard Kikeffer in nineteen ninety sevens Forbidden Rights when

606
00:35:44,160 --> 00:35:48,279
Speaker 1: Franciscan Friar Bernard de Lussius was accused by the Holy

607
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 1: Inquisition of using necromancy against the Pope in thirteen nineteen,

608
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: he was cleared of the charge, but he was still

609
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: sent to prison for merely possessing a book of alleged necromancy.

610
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 3: Simon and I'd rather see you dead.

611
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean that the movie you're referencing does does

612
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 1: present this various top down view of forbidden knowledge and

613
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 1: so forth.

614
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:17,200
Speaker 3: We're talking about The Devil Rides Out by the Way,

615
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:20,279
Speaker 3: where Christopher Lee's character like, Oh, it's okay for him

616
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 3: to know about all of the forbidden magical rituals, but

617
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 3: it's not okay for his friend Simon to know about them.

618
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean within one of these these cultural situations,

619
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:31,839
Speaker 1: it's always okay for someone to know about them, to

620
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:33,879
Speaker 1: know about these things, and those are the ones who

621
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,360
Speaker 1: get to tell everyone else that they're not allowed to

622
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 1: know about them. The witch hunters get all the cool texts. Anyway,

623
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: Fears and accusations of clergy possessing and or using necromatic

624
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 1: writings continued afterwards. However, Kei Keffer discusses these books as

625
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 1: concerning quote explicitly demonic magic as well, and this seems

626
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:57,759
Speaker 1: to have been the case during the Middle Ages as well,

627
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:03,399
Speaker 1: where sometimes something described necromancy did involve divination via the dead,

628
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:08,000
Speaker 1: but other times it was used interchangeably with demonic magic

629
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 1: by most theological definitions. However, communication with demons and demonic

630
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: divination would not be the same as merely speaking with

631
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 1: the dead, unless you're getting into this again this very

632
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 1: specific Christian caveat about the distinction or the lack of

633
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:27,919
Speaker 1: a distinction between the two. Ki Keffer writes, quote One

634
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,239
Speaker 1: possible reason for the conflation of these terms and concepts

635
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 1: was the widespread assumption that when one engaged in necromancy

636
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:38,320
Speaker 1: in the original sense conjuring the spirits of the deceased,

637
00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: the spirits which in fact appeared were demons in the

638
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:46,239
Speaker 1: forms of the dead. And the biblical example here that

639
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:51,640
Speaker 1: is often summoned up to support this is the shade

640
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: of Samuel being conjured by the Witch of Indore, and

641
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:58,320
Speaker 1: it is said that this is not really the spirit

642
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:01,640
Speaker 1: of Samuel, this is a demon in the guise of

643
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: his spirit.

644
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 3: I don't think the Bible says that. I think in

645
00:38:05,120 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 3: the Bible it is pretty much understood to be Samuel.

646
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but again you get into like what are

647
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: the official interpretations of a given religious text? Right, Yeah, Still,

648
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:19,840
Speaker 1: there was discussion of pure necromancy in various texts. A

649
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 1: couple of examples are brought up here. There's the Rowlinson

650
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 1: Necromatic Manuscript, as it's popularly known. This is a Latin

651
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: and Middle English collection of texts on magic and divination,

652
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 1: including the invocation of angels as well as the dead.

653
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 1: Its name for Richard Rawlinson, an eighteenth century clergy member

654
00:38:37,719 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 1: and collector of rare books and manuscripts. So yeah, it

655
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 1: contains instructions for necromantic magic, as does the so called

656
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:50,320
Speaker 1: Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, a fifteenth century Godick Grimour.

657
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 1: Instructions from the Munich Manual via Keith Keffer involve the

658
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: creation of multiple magic circles, a sword in a ring.

659
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:03,800
Speaker 1: And you can use these rights to speak to the dead, certainly,

660
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:06,399
Speaker 1: but also you can make a living person appear dead.

661
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:08,919
Speaker 1: You can also make a living person fall in love

662
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 1: with you, and many other things. M Now, in one section,

663
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 1: kik Effer adds some interesting ideas about the idea of

664
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:31,719
Speaker 1: necromancy and nonsense. We often assume that everyone considering necromancy

665
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:35,480
Speaker 1: in medieval times was either an eager believer or a

666
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:38,280
Speaker 1: fearful inquisitor when it came to this kind of stuff.

667
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: So he writes the following quote. One might add to

668
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: this that it is not altogether anachronistic to see the

669
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: notion of necromancy as nonsense. As it's at its most playful,

670
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: it was a deliberate violation of sense, a fantasy of illusion,

671
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:58,719
Speaker 1: perhaps intended more for imaginative entertainment than for actual use.

672
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:03,760
Speaker 1: Yet the bound between sense and nonsense are rarely quite stable,

673
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: and themes that seem to an outsider absolutely nonsensical could

674
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:12,240
Speaker 1: be taken in deadly earnest by some observers within the culture.

675
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:17,440
Speaker 1: And the deadly deadly earnest observers in this particular case

676
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:20,359
Speaker 1: he would be referring to, would be like the witch

677
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: hunters and so forth, the demonology of theorists that brought

678
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: about so much actual, real misery in the world.

679
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 3: Ah, So he's exploring the possibility that it was the

680
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 3: inquisitors and so forth who were taking the concept more

681
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:40,279
Speaker 3: literally than the people who practiced it.

682
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:43,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think maybe suggesting that there is again

683
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: kind of a it's not just necromancy and non necromancy.

684
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 1: You know, there's a broad spectrum of various beliefs, practices, rights,

685
00:40:51,120 --> 00:40:56,000
Speaker 1: but also stories, legends, myths that make concerns speaking with

686
00:40:56,040 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: the dead, that are understood to varying degree within a

687
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:05,120
Speaker 1: given group to not be reality, you know, to in

688
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: the same way that myth is somewhere between reality and fiction.

689
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: You know that some of these traditions hold that place.

690
00:41:12,160 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: But then you have someone come in with an agenda,

691
00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: with a violent agenda, and they're here to stamp out

692
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:22,240
Speaker 1: practices that are a threat to the church, to stamp

693
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 1: out individuals that are a threat to the church. Well,

694
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 1: then they can take any of these things and use

695
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:30,600
Speaker 1: them to support their case. Now for a little more

696
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:33,359
Speaker 1: detail on where the church stood on necromancy. And again

697
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,359
Speaker 1: you're dealing with we're dealing with with centuries here, we're

698
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:39,239
Speaker 1: dealing with with with all sorts of individuals coming in

699
00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 1: with different ideas. So this is not presented to be

700
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:46,839
Speaker 1: like the word on necromancy. But I thought it would

701
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:53,320
Speaker 1: be interesting to turn to the famous writings of Thomas Aquinas,

702
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 1: who lived twelve twenty five through twelve seventy four. This

703
00:41:56,800 --> 00:42:01,000
Speaker 1: is from the Suma Theologica, or the Summer of Theology.

704
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 1: The book covers a great deal of ground, but it

705
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 1: does mention necromancy in a few places and gets to

706
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:10,920
Speaker 1: the meat of what it was thought to be at

707
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 1: the time in terms of divination. So this is from

708
00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 1: a translation of the Simo theological quote. All divinations seek

709
00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 1: to acquire fore knowledge of future events by means of

710
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:25,839
Speaker 1: some council and help of a demon who is either

711
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:29,280
Speaker 1: expressly called upon to give his help or else thrust

712
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 1: himself in secretly in order to tell certain future things

713
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:37,719
Speaker 1: unknown to men but known to him the demon in

714
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 1: such manners as to have been explained in Isaiah fifty

715
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:41,919
Speaker 1: seven to three.

716
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:45,000
Speaker 3: The statement almost seems like a direct argument against what

717
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:48,680
Speaker 3: we were just talking about with respect to the subtlety

718
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 3: and complex range of different kinds of communication with the

719
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 3: dead that might take place, especially in a culture that

720
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:58,680
Speaker 3: practices common forms of ancestor veneration.

721
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like, clearly we're dealing with a situation

722
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:04,399
Speaker 1: where it is not thought that there is any room

723
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 1: for this sort of thing within within the Christian world

724
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:10,759
Speaker 1: and anything outside of the Christian world, that even looks

725
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:13,520
Speaker 1: like this is probably against the rules.

726
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:16,400
Speaker 3: It's always to know the future, and it's always a demon.

727
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 1: Yes, So Aquinas continues to in states when demons are

728
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 1: expressly invoked, they are wont to foretell the future in

729
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: many ways. Sometimes they offer themselves to human sight and

730
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:32,120
Speaker 1: hearing by mock apparitions in order to foretell the future,

731
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 1: and this species is called prusta digitation because man's eyes

732
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:41,759
Speaker 1: are blindfolded. Sometimes they make use of dreams, and this

733
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 1: is called divination by dreams. Sometimes they employ apparitions or

734
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:50,200
Speaker 1: utterances of the dead, and this species is called necromancy.

735
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: For as Isidore observes, in Greek, necron means dead and

736
00:43:55,560 --> 00:44:00,160
Speaker 1: mantilla divination, because after certain incantations and the sprinkling of blood,

737
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: the dead seem to come to life, to divine and

738
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:05,799
Speaker 1: to answer questions. So he goes on to discuss other

739
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: forms of divination. Divination, he says, which is practiced without

740
00:44:09,080 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 1: express invocation of demons, occurs in two forms, one by

741
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: observing things in nature, and the other by observing things

742
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:19,439
Speaker 1: due to human action, like rolling dice or flipping through

743
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:22,880
Speaker 1: a book. He writes again in translation, accordingly, it is

744
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 1: clear that there are three kinds of divination. The first

745
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:28,719
Speaker 1: is when the demons are invoked openly. This comes under

746
00:44:28,719 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 1: the head of necromancy. The second is merely an observation

747
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: of the disposition or movement of some other being, and

748
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:38,840
Speaker 1: this belongs to augury, while the third consists in doing

749
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 1: something in order to discover the occult, and this belongs

750
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 1: to Sordolach. Under each of these, many others are contained

751
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: as explained above. And he says, in all the afore said,

752
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:52,920
Speaker 1: there is the same general, but not the same special

753
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:56,279
Speaker 1: character of sin. For it is much more grievous to

754
00:44:56,400 --> 00:44:59,160
Speaker 1: invoke the demons than to do things that deserve the

755
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:02,640
Speaker 1: demons enter fear. And so he's saying, look, if you're

756
00:45:02,680 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: trying to do let's say you're trying to speak to

757
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:07,359
Speaker 1: the spirit of the dead, and a demon intercepts the call,

758
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:11,799
Speaker 1: as they always will, and then manipulates you through that communication,

759
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: that's one thing. Like, that's bad, you've messed up, But

760
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:18,359
Speaker 1: you haven't messed up as badly if you had gone

761
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 1: out and done a demonic ritual and said, hey, demons,

762
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:25,000
Speaker 1: I need you to come here because we have things

763
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: to talk about. Now. I did find it interesting that

764
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:34,399
Speaker 1: Aquinas stresses that merely speaking to a demon or inquiring

765
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:39,520
Speaker 1: of the truth from a demon is not unlawful, in

766
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 1: part because Christ spoke to the demon legion. He spoke

767
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 1: to the demons that were in the swine or were

768
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:51,760
Speaker 1: driven into the swine. However, it is unlawful to invoke

769
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:55,799
Speaker 1: a demon. So by this classification, I would think, if

770
00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:58,480
Speaker 1: a demon comes up to you and is like, hey, so,

771
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:02,400
Speaker 1: you have every right to go suck back, but it

772
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:06,399
Speaker 1: is unlawful to summon the demon and then go suck right.

773
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 3: Yes, so, if you encounter a demon, you can talk

774
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 3: to you, probably you can argue with it or whatever,

775
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 3: but you can't say like, hey, demons, if any demon

776
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 3: is out there, come debate me.

777
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:20,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Like, if you're Martin Luther and the demons

778
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 1: show up, you can cuss at them, throw things at them,

779
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 1: and drive them away, right, that's not demonic witchcraft or

780
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:29,279
Speaker 1: what have you. But if you summon them, I guess

781
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:32,000
Speaker 1: even if you summon them to cuss at them, like,

782
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:32,800
Speaker 1: that's bad.

783
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 3: I would assume so. But especially if you summon them

784
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:38,680
Speaker 3: in order to gain power from them, that's bad.

785
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Aquina says, quote, Now, it is one thing

786
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: to question a demon who comes to us of his

787
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 1: own accord, and it is lawful to do so at

788
00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: times for the good of others, especially when he can

789
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:51,200
Speaker 1: be compelled by the power of God to tell the truth,

790
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 1: and another to invoke a demon in order to gain

791
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 1: from him knowledge of things hidden from us. Now, I

792
00:46:57,560 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: don't know, it seems to me like that opens up

793
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:03,160
Speaker 1: a great area. Are like, are you just could you

794
00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: put yourself in a position where you're just in the

795
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:09,480
Speaker 1: right place to encounter demons, so you're not quite summoning them,

796
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 1: but you're like, you're not baiting the demon, but you

797
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 1: are hanging out in a place or a position where

798
00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 1: they might show up.

799
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like, I'm gonna just keep moving my

800
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:21,759
Speaker 3: arms this way, and if they happen to touch a

801
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:24,560
Speaker 3: Wiji board, that's its problem, not mine.

802
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:26,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm or Yeah, I'm going to hang out in

803
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:32,040
Speaker 1: this this this haunted crypt and we'll just see what happens. Yeah.

804
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: He also mentions that divination by the stars is fine

805
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:39,080
Speaker 1: so long as you're not invoking a demon. So again,

806
00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:41,760
Speaker 1: this is just a snapshot at some of the top

807
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 1: down ideas about speaking to the dead and why you

808
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: shouldn't do it, and ultimately a little bit of demonology

809
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:50,520
Speaker 1: splashed in there as well. But but you know, there's

810
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 1: so much that would have been going on in different

811
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:59,200
Speaker 1: cultures throughout the centuries covered by the Middle Ages here.

812
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:02,560
Speaker 1: I mean, there are all sorts of traditions involving, you know,

813
00:48:02,600 --> 00:48:06,920
Speaker 1: speaking to the dead, conjuring the dead at crossroads and

814
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 1: so forth. And then there's so many on top of that,

815
00:48:10,200 --> 00:48:13,560
Speaker 1: there's so many different traditions, legends, ghost stories, etc. That

816
00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 1: deal with this sort of thing that again may not

817
00:48:16,640 --> 00:48:19,239
Speaker 1: have a like literal role within the culture saying this

818
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:21,960
Speaker 1: is how you speak to the dead, but like here

819
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:24,440
Speaker 1: is an idea of speaking to the dead, and it

820
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:27,000
Speaker 1: can still have a great deal of importance within a

821
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: given culture.

822
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,320
Speaker 3: Now, seeing these different views of communicating with the dead

823
00:48:31,480 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 3: side by side, it really highlights how one, I think

824
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:41,720
Speaker 3: could easily be mistaken for the other by an unsympathetic observer,

825
00:48:42,200 --> 00:48:45,720
Speaker 3: like somebody who's got a particular theological point of view

826
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:48,399
Speaker 3: and who looks into a culture one of the many

827
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 3: cultures that practice's forms of ancestor veneration that may involve

828
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 3: some type of ritual of consulting with the dead, with

829
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:59,400
Speaker 3: the ancestors seeking their wisdom or getting information about how

830
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:04,120
Speaker 3: they're continue to affect your life like that, an unsympathetic

831
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 3: observer looks in on a culture and sees that and

832
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:10,919
Speaker 3: they say, oh, they're doing witchcraft in order to get

833
00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 3: power from the dead so that they can like no

834
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:17,680
Speaker 3: events in advance and you know, and manipulate people. It

835
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:20,399
Speaker 3: seems very clear how that kind of mistaken impression could

836
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:25,279
Speaker 3: be formed, And I wonder if that gives rise to

837
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 3: some legends of necromantic practices that probably weren't ever actually practiced,

838
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:36,000
Speaker 3: that were just like unsympathetic observer looking in on ancestor

839
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:40,439
Speaker 3: veneration of some form in another culture and saying like, ah,

840
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:43,840
Speaker 3: they're they're consulting the dead in order to do something malicious.

841
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:47,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. And then at the same time, I mean

842
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:49,440
Speaker 1: you have things like the veneration of saints with then

843
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 1: you know Catholic Christian traditions that you know, you could

844
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:56,880
Speaker 1: make an argument for sort of you know, scratching the

845
00:49:56,920 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: same itch. So you know, a lot of this falls

846
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,880
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this depends on who's judging,

847
00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:07,440
Speaker 1: who's laying out the laws, and who's saying what is

848
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:11,880
Speaker 1: acceptable and what is not acceptable when we consider individuals

849
00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:13,520
Speaker 1: and generations that came before us.

850
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:16,879
Speaker 3: Do you think Aquinas was saying it's okay to talk

851
00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:19,920
Speaker 3: to a demon if you didn't summon it, because like

852
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:23,319
Speaker 3: he did that one time, Like he's like, actually, that's

853
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:24,160
Speaker 3: not a problem.

854
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,719
Speaker 1: Well, there are so many you know, I enjoy reading

855
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 1: about this occasionally, like getting into exactly what was thought

856
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 1: of as correct concerning demons at various points in the

857
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:39,399
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, like what could they do and what could

858
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:43,239
Speaker 1: they not do in accordance with divine will? And there's

859
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: some of that in Aquinas's writing, for sure, and you

860
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:48,800
Speaker 1: see that in the writings of other key individuals as well,

861
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: like can they like one classic example of this we've

862
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: just we've discussed multiple times is can an incubus or

863
00:50:56,080 --> 00:51:00,400
Speaker 1: succubist take on a complete disguise as a beautiful human

864
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:05,120
Speaker 1: to seduce humans? And there's the ideal, No, that wouldn't

865
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:07,759
Speaker 1: be fair to the faithful. So there'll always be some

866
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 1: sort of a tell, like duck feet or some sort

867
00:51:11,160 --> 00:51:13,719
Speaker 1: of goat feed or something just so that you'll have

868
00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:16,480
Speaker 1: so the faithful will have an out that you know,

869
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:18,160
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of stuff like that. Can

870
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 1: demons do miracles? And so forth?

871
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:22,480
Speaker 3: Though, I think as we discussed with the idea of

872
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:25,600
Speaker 3: the duck feed, I wonder if the idea was was

873
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:30,000
Speaker 3: really about the faithful having out or more about saying like, ah, yeah,

874
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:33,239
Speaker 3: if you did succumb to an incubus or a succubus,

875
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:35,719
Speaker 3: it's your fault because there was something there you should

876
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:36,400
Speaker 3: have noticed.

877
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 1: Right.

878
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:40,160
Speaker 3: It's about saying, like, you know, it wasn't unfair to you,

879
00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:42,240
Speaker 3: you should have been more on the lookout.

880
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:46,240
Speaker 1: Right, And also like what would a just god allow

881
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:49,759
Speaker 1: under his domain? You know? And you know, there's of

882
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:52,719
Speaker 1: course the more pressing side of that, like why did

883
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 1: bad things happen to good people? Why is there suffering

884
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:56,799
Speaker 1: in the world, and so forth? And that's I guess

885
00:51:56,880 --> 00:51:59,760
Speaker 1: the larger concern. But then when you get into demonology,

886
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:02,680
Speaker 1: like that's a whole other area, like okay, well these

887
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: demons get to run around and just do whatever. That

888
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: doesn't seem right. They're like, well, no, no, no, they can

889
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:10,600
Speaker 1: do certain things. And I believe Aquinas writes that, like

890
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:14,120
Speaker 1: they are allowed to do certain things because by allowing

891
00:52:14,239 --> 00:52:18,480
Speaker 1: the demons a certain amount of freedom, it actually has

892
00:52:18,520 --> 00:52:21,839
Speaker 1: a positive impact on the faithful, you know, because like

893
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: in having to deal with all of this demonic stuff,

894
00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:28,680
Speaker 1: like it's going to end up bolstering your faith to

895
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:33,239
Speaker 1: some extent. But it's complicate. It's complicated. That's why. That's

896
00:52:33,280 --> 00:52:36,400
Speaker 1: why people like Aquinas committed so many words to it.

897
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 3: Okay, should we wrap up necromancy there?

898
00:52:39,680 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 1: I believe we will, But you know, we'd love to

899
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:44,120
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there if there's an example of

900
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: outright and necromancy and fiction legend and lore, or various

901
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:55,200
Speaker 1: examples of communication with spirits or ancestor veneration that you

902
00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:57,839
Speaker 1: think are notable and you'd like to bring up well

903
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:00,120
Speaker 1: right in We would love to hear from you and

904
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 1: keep discussing this topic on future editions of Listener Mail.

905
00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:07,640
Speaker 1: Listener Mail publishes on Mondays and the Stuff to Blow

906
00:53:07,640 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 1: Your Mind podcast feed. We have our core episodes of

907
00:53:10,400 --> 00:53:12,839
Speaker 1: the show Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

908
00:53:13,080 --> 00:53:16,000
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we generally have a short form monster fact

909
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:18,520
Speaker 1: or artifact episode, and then on Fridays we set aside

910
00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:21,320
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

911
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:22,560
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.

912
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:26,400
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913
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:28,000
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914
00:53:28,080 --> 00:53:30,520
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915
00:53:30,560 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

916
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:35,719
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917
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:44,200
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918
00:53:44,239 --> 00:53:47,200
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919
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:50,080
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921
00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:05,400
Speaker 1: Nations Theraporatorator